The diary of Theodore Robinson, an American impressionist

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Sona Johnston

Frequently called the first American impressionist, Theodore Robinson was born in Irasburg, Vermont, spent his youth in Evansville, Wisconsin, and eventually settled in New York City, where he became an influential and much admired member of the artistic community during the 1880s and early 1890s. Throughout his career, his ties with France were strong, and he served as a vital link between avant-garde developments in Europe and the progress of art in his native country.

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Like many of his contemporaries, Robinson received his initial artistic training in the United States, first at the Chicago Academy of Design and later at the National Academy of Design in New York City. In 1876 he traveled abroad for the first time, going to Paris, where he studied with Charles Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran (1837-1917), Jean Leon Gerome (1824-1904), and Benjamin Constant (1845-1902). He painted at Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877. (1) Returning to New York in 1879, he taught painting and worked on mural decorations for John La Farge (1835-1910) and Prentice Treadwell (d. 1902) in New York, Newport, and Boston. In 1884 he departed once again for France, which became the focus of his creative energies for nearly a decade.

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Much is revealed about Robinson in his diaries, which are in the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City (see Pl. VII). (2) Not only did he record his feelings and thoughts about his various endeavors and those of his artist friends, but he also described the tenor of artistic life in the 1890s in New York, Paris, and at Giverny, France, where he made six extended visits between 1887 and 1892. In the course of these sojourns, his close association with the resident impressionist Claude Monet (Pl. II) drew him away from the American realist tradition.

The importance that Robinson attached to his diaries is revealed in a letter from a younger relation of the artist to the scholar John I. H. Baur (1909-1987):

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I hope you have had access to Mr. Robinson's journal. When I was in his
studio one time, he put his hand on it and with an almost affection,
touching it as he said, "that is my journal." (3)

The four extant volumes cover the period from March 29, 1892, through March 30, 1896, three days before the artist's death in New York City. At the age of forty-three he succumbed to a lung ailment that had plagued him throughout his life. His brief references to his physical infirmities attest to their increasing severity.

The first volume, covering his last sojourn at Giverny, reveals in almost daily notations the intimate nature of his relationship with Monet and his family, and the gradual refinement of his own impressionist style. In the three subsequent volumes, he describes his life as a hardworking New York artist and teacher, and reveals with increasing frequency his desire to find a locale in the United States that would provide the same visual stimulus and general ambiance that had sustained him both personally and professionally at Giverny.

The initial entry in the diary, on March 29, 1892, tells of a visit to Boston to help install a joint show of his work and that of the landscape painter Theodore Wendel (1859-1932), which was held at the Williams and Everett Gallery from April 1 to April 14. On May 13 Robinson dined in New York in the company of his friends Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919) and John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) before departing for France on the Bourgogne. Disembarking at Le Havre, he journeyed by train to the village of Vernon on the border between Normandy and the Ile-de-France, and from there walked across a bridge over the Seine River to Giverny. Arriving in the evening of May 22, he visited Monet the following day and was "most cordially received." (4) In the same entry he comments that Monet had been in Rouen in the course of the previous winter and had painted a number of views of the thirteenth-century Cathedral of Notre-Dame there:

They are noble canvases, well filled up, and conveying a fine idea of
grandeur and solidity--one grey day is colossal. The sunshine ones are
handsome, but as he [Monet] says, makes one think of the south, Venice
or Sicily.

In early June, Robinson recorded that he had begun a group of three identical landscape views taken from the hills above the Seine valley looking toward Vernon on the opposite bank of the river. During the next several weeks, he noted his progress and frustration in capturing the effects of changing atmospheric conditions on the terrain. On June 6 he wrote: "Worked at my Vue de Vernon--it is begun with too modified color--I must try for more purity. And not to work beyond the hour chosen for the effect--Tis most important." Six days later he noted: "Good morning on the cote. I had two canvases--worked on the first--grey for an hour; then the sun began to come thro' giving me a chance on the other." This series of three canvases reflects his absorption of Monet's artistic vision and methods and was the culmination of his creative efforts at Giverny (see Pl. IV). (5)